Entertainment

What the Egyptian Revolution Taught Al Jazeera About Digital

Much has been made of the role that social media played in the Egyptian revolution, including the way international news network Al Jazeera used social media in its reporting. But the crisis also taught the organization a number of lessons about digital media — lessons we’ll see the impact of as Al Jazeera continues to cover ongoing turmoil in other parts of the Middle East.

“I’ve always pushed our newsrooms to... go out and find stuff where people are putting it already,” said Al Jazeera English online chief Mohamed Nanabhay, with whom we had the opportunity to speak earlier this week at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.

Don't Call It a Facebook Revolution

Nanabhay is quick to acknowledge the role social media played from a newsgathering perspective in Egypt, but he also dismisses some of the hyperbole that has emerged in the revolution’s aftermath.

“It’s not a Twitter or Facebook revolution... It’s an Egyptian revolution. Social media and mass media were important and had multiplying effects, but people didn’t protest because of Twitter,” he said.

That said, the network quickly discovered how it could more effectively use Twitter as the crisis in Egypt escalated.

Nanabhay said, “When you go to 24/7 rolling news, the way people expect their content to be delivered is different. We used to be hesitant to send out too many updates [on Twitter]. But when it’s 24/7, they want to be flooded; they want to know [even if it’s not big news].”

Noticing this trend, Al Jazeera shifted resources to ensure that on every shift, the network had someone whose sole task was to keep the Twitter feed updated. The organization also began to see some of its viewers tweeting information based on its on-air reporting quicker than they were tweeting it on their own account. In these cases, Nanabhay said, they simply started retweeting their viewers.

Live Blogging and Tumblr Emerge

The demand for real-time reporting also saw Al Jazeera’s live blog grow immensely popular. “At any given time there were three times more people on the live blog than on the main story [on Al Jazeera’s homepage]. Your editor usually invests [so much time] in the lead story... but if you look at the numbers, people were on the live blog hitting refresh. [So] we threw more resources into that,” Nanabhay said.

The popularity of the live blog inadvertently pushed Al Jazeera onto a new platform: Tumblr. When the live blog went down due to heavy traffic, the company quickly set up shop on Tumblr to keep its updates coming. When its live blog came back up, it dropped off Tumblr. But then a user put up a graphic asking Al Jazeera to come back, so it did; and the organization has been updating its Tumblr ever since.

New Appeal With U.S. Viewers

Demand for Al Jazeera in other places — most notably on U.S. television networks — also got a big boost from social media during the Egypt protests. According to Nanabhay, the company’s “demand Al Jazeera” campaign saw more than 45,000 people e-mail their cable providers requesting they carry the channel, and more than 7,000 Twitter uses tweeted with the #demandaljazeera hashtag.

In spite of the success stories and his role in formulating digital strategy — including getting the network on YouTube way back in 2007 — Nanabhay still views Al Jazeera’s first responsibility as reporting the news.

“What’s behind [our social media success] is excellence in world-class journalism. The social media campaigns have been methods to get people to watch that content and make up their minds. Once you see it, you’ll be hooked and come back for more.”

Wadah Khanfar Speaks at TED

Director General of the Al Jazeera Network Wadah Khanfar spoke on stage at TED. You can watch his talk in the video below:

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